07/29/2026
Former BIA officer sentenced to 14 years for ra**ng Lame Deer teen
Reporter: Paul Hamby
A former BIA officer assigned to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation will spend over a decade in prison for ra**ng a teenage girl while on duty and then attempting to conceal his crime.
Murrell Douglas Deela was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court for s*xual abuse and making false statements. The 30-year-old was patrolling Lame Deer in 2024 when he arrested a 14-year-old girl who was intoxicated. Instead of taking the girl home, Deela s*xually exploited her.
Murrell Douglas Deela, 30, was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for ra**ng an underage girl in Lame Deer while on duty as a BIA officer July 29, 2026.
“He should have seen a child in need of protection,” Assistant United States Attorney Taylor Payne said at Deela's sentencing, held at the James F. Battin Federal Courthouse in Billings. Instead, Taylor said, Deela abused his power as a law enforcement officer, then lied about his crime, “over and over and over again.”
Prior to his sentencing Wednesday, Deela had already stirred federal scrutiny.
In 2021, he killed Arlin Bordeaux in Lame Deer. Deela, responding to a trespassing complaint, shot the 29-year-old father of two twice in the back. Although the U.S. Attorney’s Office cleared Deela of any wrongdoing, Bordeaux’s family reached a settlement with the federal government after filing a lawsuit over his death.
Late on the night of Aug. 7, 2024, Deela was on patrol and responded to a report that someone was drunk at the gas station in Lame Deer known as the Depot. When Deela and BIA Officer Jonathan Nestico arrived at the gas station in separate patrol vehicles, they found a 14-year-old girl under the influence of alcohol. When she tried running away Deela shouldered her to the ground and arrested her, according to court documents.
Deela wrote in his report of the arrest that the girl tripped and fell. Deela put her in the back of his cruiser, reporting to dispatch that he would be taking the girl to her grandmother’s house in Lame Deer. Instead of taking the girl to her grandmother's, Deela drove to the People’s Park just south of town.
Video footage recovered from the interior of Deela’s patrol vehicle showed Deela reaching the park, getting out and opening the passenger door where the teen was seated. Footage then showed the teen sliding out of the cruiser and Deela starting to touch her. Deela r***d the then 14-year-old girl.
Deela did eventually bring to the girl to her grandmother’s home that night. Once there, she reported the abuse to law enforcement. Federal authorities gathered evidence to corroborate the girl’s statement, despite Deela’s attempts to hide it.
On Aug. 8, 2024, supervisors from the BIA’s Office of Justice Services notified Deela that the girl had accused him of s*xual assault, court documents said.
In a report he wrote after learning the girl had disclosed his abusing her, Deela claimed that the girl was “crying hysterically and slurring her words,” court documents said. Deela wrote in his bogus report that he gave the girl a breathalyzer test and then took her home to her grandmother’s house.
“Officer Deela did not include in his report that he transported (the survivor) to People’s Park,” wrote the FBI agent who investigated Deela’s crime.
While falsifying his report to conceal the fact that he’d r***d a teenage girl, Deela then told the BIA-OJS chief of police in Lame Deer and an FBI agent he was “unable to download” footage from the interior of his patrol vehicle.
When Deela was ordered to bring his vehicle in for an inspection, the cruiser somehow caught fire. Deela called dispatch to report that “his patrol vehicle was on fire outside his house,” the FBI investigator wrote.
A Bureau of Alcohol, To***co, Fi****ms and Explosives investigator determined the fire had been “intentionally ignited,” and resulted in damage to the cruiser’s interior camera and its recordings. Prosecutors have consistently accused Deela of torching his cruiser, but Deela maintained through his sentencing that he did not start the fire.
At his sentencing Wednesday, Deela’s attorney once again asserted that his client denied starting the fire, arguing that it should not be considered in U.S. District Judge William Mercer’s decision on Deela’s sentence. There was ample evidence showing that Deela started the fire, Mercer said, and he saw the destruction of the cruiser as just “one link in a fairly extensive chain.”
Despite the damage, experts still recovered footage that showed Deela taking the girl to the park, rubbing her body, turning off his headlights and taking her “outside the view of patrol vehicle cameras,” court documents said.
Amid Deela’s campaign of deception, DNA analysis determined semen on the girl’s pants was almost certainly his. Federal prosecutors charged Deela with s*xual abuse and making false statements in October 2025. After making his initial appearance in U.S. District Court and pleading not guilty to the accusations, Deela was released from custody.
Deela, a former Marine, member of the National Guard and deputy in his home state of Oklahoma, was living in Sheridan, Wyoming, leading up to his change of plea hearing earlier this year.
On April 2, 2026, Payne was blunt in his description of the abuse Deela inflicted on a teenage girl. Deela, then a 29-year-old man, forced a 14-year-old intoxicated girl into oral and vaginal s*x. Once Payne established those facts, Judge Mercer asked Deela if he agreed with the fact that he r***d an underage girl.
“Yes, your honor,” Deela said.
Deela has remained in custody since entering his guilty plea, and he walked into his sentencing Wednesday flanked by marshals and wearing the black-and-white garbs issued by the Yellowstone County Detention Facility. Neither the survivor of Deela’s abuse, nor any of her family members were present in the courtroom. Payne read a text aloud to the court from the girl’s mother. She said she wasn’t capable of even looking at Deela.
Payne, who served as prosecutor alongside Special Attorney Richard Lee, argued for a 14-year prison sentence. The trauma that Deela inflicted on the girl was overwhelming, Payne said, for her and her family.
“He was bigger, stronger, sober and clothed with the power of a BIA police officer,” he said.
Crimes committed by law enforcement officers are difficult to uncover, Payne said, and they are particularly heinous because they erode the public’s trust in police. When law enforcers become law breakers, he said, everyone feels unsafe.
“This is especially true in vulnerable communities,” Payne said.
Deela’s attorney, Ryan Warner, asked Judge Mercer for a five-year sentence, followed by a lifetime under federal supervision. Deela has accepted responsibility for his crimes, Warner said, and absolutely appreciates the trauma he has caused. Deela would readily submit to any prison sentence that prosecutors recommended, but he has a wife and children.
When given the chance to speak, Deela said he hoped that the girl he abused will be able to recover, and that some day she would be able to forgive him. The pain he caused went against one of his core beliefs, Deela said: protecting those who cannot stand up for themselves.
“I ask for leniency not for me,” Deela said to Mercer, “but for my family.”
Mercer, agreeing with prosecutors, sentenced Deela to 14 years in prison, followed by five years of supervised release. Mercer, after making it clear to Deela that he is now barred from ever possessing a weapon, told him that he is still going to be a relatively young person when he leaves prison. Deela is capable of becoming a law-abiding citizen, Mercer said, and he hoped that Deela will never be in a court room again.
Murrell Douglas Deela was patrolling Lame Deer in 2024 when he arrested a 14-year-old girl who was intoxicated. Instead of taking the girl home, Deela r***d her.
